In December 1926, when the writer Marion Milner (née Blackett) was 26 years old, she started keeping a diary. Her aim was to understand what made her happy and motivated in life, so that she might feel more present in living it.
For years Milner had been feeling dissatisfied, going about her days in a “half-dream state” with a vague but prevailing discontent. Nothing was exactly wrong – she was well-off, beginning her career as an industrial psychologist, and soon to be married – yet still she felt “something was the matter”. Her life in London was “of dull dead-level mediocrity, with the sense of real and vital things going on round the corner”.
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